Sunday, June 3, 2012

The importance of a list

E-mail marketing was once scorned upon by internet marketers as the tactics used by spammers.It was true that at the beginning of e-mail marketing the situation was really chaotic and unethical. Junk e-mails jammed up everyone's inbox, it was like searching for a needle in a heap of hay if one tried to find any e-mail which was useful and informative.You had to spend hours doing it and deleting the junks, otherwise your inbox quota would be exceeded pretty soon, then you could not go into your inbox.

Under such circumstances, there was no point in building an e-mail list because no one will ever read your e-mails.

But the situation is much improved now. The major e-mail providers have strict anti-spamming regulations, anyone failing to comply will have his account deleted.

They also introduce new features whereby the users can set up filters to black list any unsolicited e-mails, so that these e-mails will be thrown into a spams folder and never reach the users' inbox.

Another reason why e-mail marketing was not popular then was because marketers preferred people to purchase their products from their websites.Many people were using free web hosting provided by Geocites, Fire Angel, Tripod and others. These providers divided their users into categories according to their interests, called neighborhoods.They were given long URLs and difficult to memorize, therefore a visitor usually had to scan the neighborhood from top to bottom, and your website stood a very good chance to be viewed if it happened to be in that neighborhood.That means you did not need a list your website still received visitors automatically.

These free web hosting providers are all defunct now, the paid web hosting companies nowadays do not provide such community services any more. You have to bring visitors to your sites by ranking high in the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN through search engines optimization (SEO)efforts.Or tell your list to go visit your sites.

It is very difficult to attain high ranking on search engines if your chosen niche is very competitive and also it takes time.Whereas if you have a list, you can show your new products or affiliate offers to them immediately. It is so much more effective.If they do not take up your offer the first time, you can send them the offer again with a different approach until they make a purchase. Of course, you have to be careful and sensitive while doing this, never, ever make yourself a nuisance to others!

Spammers are still around, they never learn. Who in his right mind will ever buy from a spammer, who is universally considered of low commercial ethic and integrity? If you build your list following the right procedure, you will not be considered a spammer because you are not sending unsolicited e-mails. Your list members have opted-in and also have the option to unsubscribe if he so desires.

Build a list now and start building relationships with the members.

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